NEW
YORK (Reuters Health) - Various reports indicate that young people
who use cannabis tend to experience psychological and social problems.
However, there is no evidence that marijuana use is directly linked
with such problems, according to the results of a study published
in The Lancet.

"Currently,
there is no strong evidence that use of cannabis of itself causes
psychological or social problems," such as mental illness or
school failure, lead study author Dr. John Macleod of the University
of Birmingham in the UK told Reuters Health.

"There
is a great deal of evidence that cannabis use is associated with
these things, but this association could have several explanations," he
said, citing factors such as adversity in early life, which may itself
be associated with cannabis use and psychosocial problems.

Macleod
and his team reviewed 48 long-term studies, 16 of which provided
the highest quality information about the association between illicit
drug use reported by people 25 years old or younger and later psychological
or social problems. Most of the drug-specific results involved cannabis
use.

One
consistent finding among the studies was that young people who reported
using cannabis were more likely to have attained a lower educational
level than their non-cannabis using peers. Cannabis users were also
more likely to report an increased use of other illicit drugs.

On
the other hand, cannabis use was not consistently associated with
violent or antisocial behavior, or with psychological problems.

"We
are not saying cannabis is harmless, we are saying the evidence is
inconclusive," Macleod told Reuters Health.

"Claims
about the dangers of cannabis are often overstated," according
to editorialist Dr. Franjo Grotenhermen of the Nova-Institut GmbH,
Germany.

However, "there
is reason to believe that cannabis can cause psychological and social
harm to young people even if the causal association is not proven
yet," he told Reuters Health. "Cannabis use may also cause
physical harms including respiratory problems and cancer."

Still,
Grotenhermen, executive director of the International Association
for Cannabis as Medicine (IACM), argues against complete prohibition
of cannabis use.

"Alcohol
prohibition was not very successful in reducing consumption and was
very harmful to society," he said. "It seems that cannabis
prohibition also does not work very well."

"Cannabis
prohibition does not seem to reduce consumption," he added,
and it may "drive otherwise law-obeying young people into illegal
activities."

In
January of this year, Britain relaxed its laws against cannabis,
downgrading the drug from class B to the "lower risk" C
category, the same category used for steroids and antidepressants.

Under
the new law, adults over the age of 17 who are caught smoking or
in possession of a small amount of marijuana or hashish are not necessarily
arrested or fined. Arrests are made for underage users, however,
and penalties for growing and dealing in the drug have both been
toughened to a maximum 14 years in prison.

This
change in British law, "is a sensible attempt to balance the
possible harms caused by cannabis and its prohibition," Grotenhermen
writes.

Recent
study findings indicate that marijuana use among adults in the United
States remained stable in the 1990s, at about 4 percent. Marijuana
abuse and dependence rose to 1.5 percent from 1.2 percent, however,
possibly because the prevalence of more potent drugs.

TORONTO
(CP) - Marijuana users chanted "we love weed" as they marched
through the streets of downtown Toronto on Saturday, smoking their
hearts out and calling for Ottawa to legalize the drug.

About
1,000 demonstrators rallied at the Ontario legislature and later
marched through some of Toronto's busiest streets with a police escort. They
were led by Alison Myrden, who suffers from multiple sclerosis and
is wheelchair bound. She
has long fought for legalized marijuana to ease her pain. Protest
is important to raise public awareness about the medicinal benefits
of marijuana, Myrden said.

"People
don't understand that sick people still don't have an affordable
quality source of medicine," she said as she manoeuvred her
wheelchair along a tony stretch of Bloor Street. "Our government
is not helping us." Many
Canadians with chronic illnesses have been granted exemptions under
the law and can legally use marijuana to ease their pain. But getting
a reliable source of marijuana continues to be difficult for many
medicinal users.

Ottawa
has set up an underground grow operation in Manitoba, but many patients
who have received the government pot have shunned it, citing poor
quality. The
federal Liberal government has dodged efforts to legalize marijuana,
instead proposing to decriminalize it. Under
a bill now before Parliament, possessing 15 grams or less of marijuana
would no longer be a criminal matter, but would be dealt with by
a fine. The
federal bill followed a decision by an Ontario Superior Court judge
last year who ruled that possession of less than 30 grams if marijuana
was no longer against the law.

Police
forces in Ontario said they wouldn't lay charges for basic possession
until the situation was clarified and that sentiment spread across
the country. At
Saturday's protest, police were more concerned about protecting the
marchers from Toronto drivers than they were about the plumes of
smoke that wafted around the demonstrators. One
marcher holding a large joint stopped to have his picture taken with
an officer helping to direct traffic, who only responded with an
embarrassed smile.

Although
marijuana advocates want no strings attached to using the drug, they'll
settle for Ottawa's middle ground for now, said organizer Franklin
Skanks. "It's
time to legalize it, time to change the laws," he said. "I'd
prefer legalization but decriminalization would be the first step."

"I
really believe that everyone should be free to enjoy it because it
is such an amazing thing," said Katelyn Knight, a 19-year-old
Toronto college student. "Unless you smoke it, you don't realize
how amazing it is." The
demonstration was part of the Million Marijuana March, a worldwide
event held annually in more than 200 cities to demand the full legalization
of pot. Canadian
marches were also planned in Vancouver and Montreal.

Alison
Myrden has battled disability for many years and now hopes
to fight harder for those in similar circumstances.

The
staunch advocate of medical marijuana hopes to become the
federal candidate for the New Democratic Party in Burlington
riding.

The
NDP nomination meeting will be held March 25 from 7:30-9
p.m. at the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 60.

Improved
health care and better support for persons with disabilities are
key issues for Myrden, who has Multiple Sclerosis. The
Burlington resident noted the maximum income for a single person
with a disability is only $900 per month. "I'm
fully disabled and I haven't had a raise in years," said Myrden. "It's
a crime committed against people who are disabled. They have no income
and no quality of life."

Myrden
noted she has relied on her mother and longtime boyfriend Gary for
support. "I
cannot be independent and I'd like to have that opportunity," she
said. "I don't want to be a low income person. I want to be
someone who does something as a productive member of society." Myrden
has had chronic progressive MS since age 13 and chronic pain called
Tic Douloureux.

But
Myrden is ready to campaign from her wheelchair. "I know I can
take the candidacy on," she said. "I'm really excited about
it." She
has used marijuana to reduce pain and said it has enabled her to
walk for brief periods. But
Myrden said a better quality of marijuana is needed for medical users.
She has been a party to legal action compelling Health Canada to
provide a safe reliable source of medicinal marijuana for critically
and chronically ill Canadians.

Before
becoming a medical rights activist, she attended Sheridan College
and worked as a medical secretary. She was also a provincial corrections
officer working with at-risk youths and young offenders.

SAN
FRANCISCO (Reuters Health) - For people with nerve damage that can
result from HIV infection, smoking marijuana seems to relieve the
pain they experience, according to the results of a small pilot study.

Diffuse
nerve pain, or polyneuropathy, is a significant problem for many
people with HIV infection. Pre-clinical research findings suggest
that cannabis-like compounds may be effective for treating neuropathic
pain, Dr. Cheryl Jay of the University of California, San Francisco
and colleagues noted this week at the 11th Annual Retrovirus Conference.

In
a trial, 16 HIV-infected subjects with neuropathy were given three
marijuana cigarettes each day for seven days. The cigarettes were
dispensed by the pharmacy at San Francisco General Hospital. All
of the patients reported previous experience smoking marijuana but
had not done so for 30 days prior to the trial. Fourteen
of the participants were men, and their average age was 43 years.
They had had neuropathy for an average of 6 years.

Reductions
in pain were assessed using a 0-to-100 visual scale. The aim was
to achieve a 30 percent reduction in average daily pain, "which
is a pretty typical standard used in pain studies, and is considered
a clinically meaningful amount of pain relief," Jay told Reuters
Health.

Average
pain scores dropped from 47 at the start of the study to 20 at the
end of the seven-day period. Twelve of the 16participants reached
the 30-percent goal in reduction of pain, Jay said.

A
trial with participants randomized to receive marijuana or an inactive
placebo has now been started, she added, and 20 out of 50 participants
have been enrolled so far.

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Pot
Proponent Just Says No

Medical
marijuana's elder statesman is not convinced that the therapeutic
benefits of cannabis can be separated from the psychoactive effects --
or that cannabis should be "pharmaceuticalized."

From:
Issue 79 | February 2004, By: Fast Company
This Web Exclusive is offered as a supplement to Fast Company's February 2004
article
"The Cannabis Conundrum."

You
might think that the eminence grise of the medical-marijuana movement
would enthusiastically support an effort by the British biotech GW
Pharmaceuticals to produce and market medicines derived from Cannabis
sativa . But in the Aboveground Marijuana Economy, there's no such
thing as a safe assumption.

Lester
Grinspoon is a grandfather, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at
Harvard Medical School, and the author of two seminal books on the
therapeutic benefits of pot: Marihuana Reconsidered and Marihuana:
The Forbidden Medicine (co-authored with James B. Bakalar). In an
interview in his office in a Boston suburb, Grinspoon declared that
the efficacy of cannabis as a medicine is beyond question, citing
its versatility in treating a whole host of illnesses and symptoms,
from glaucoma to arthritis pain to Krohn's disease to migraine headaches. "Not
a single death has ever been attributed to a marijuana overdose," he
says. "Marijuana is one of the least toxic drugs known to humankind."

Grinspoon
was opposed to marijuana use until the early 1970s, when his 10-year
old son was diagnosed with acute lymphatic leukemia. In his book,
The Forbidden Medicine , he movingly describes how the drug relieved
the violent nausea his son experienced from chemotherapy "during
the remaining year of his life." Since then, he has interviewed
hundreds of patients who say they have been helped by marijuana.

Nevertheless,
Grinspoon is critical of GW's plan to market Sativex, a cannabis-laced
oral spray that shows promise in relieving the pain and muscle rigidity
that accompanies multiple sclerosis. It's a curious stance, given
that GW has reported to